Issue 13-11-2009
Featured Story
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Quakers back restorative justice programmes
Restorative Justice (RJ) has worked with young offenders in Northern Ireland and the Prison Reform Trust has statistics to prove it. Its report Making Amends: Restorative Youth Justice in Northern Ireland, launched last week, showed that only forty per cent of young offenders between the ages of ten and seventeen…
Top Stories
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The Fox: The Friend takes the news initiative
The first issue of this newspaper carried a story that immediately nailed its colours to the mast. It was to be a forthright, campaigning voice. Readers heard that: ‘the Indian Reports of the Yearly Meeting of Philadelphia, for 1841 and 1843, renew the sad story of the removal of the…
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A faith commitment to sustainable living
Friends were represented last week at the Windsor Celebration of faith groups’ commitments to action for climate change, jointly organised by the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Among the faiths represented were Sikhs and Hindus; Christians of many flavours from evangelical to…
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The Friend launches new website
‘The new website looks really good. I like the clear layout and the “white space” feels “quakerly” as if it’s holding the material in the light.’ ‘It does look good!’ It is this kind of feedback that makes us feel like we’re heading in the right direction with our new…
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Conflict in the Meeting
Sitting at peace in Meeting for Worship my thoughts and ponderings were with Friends around the country, both those I have had the pleasure of meeting and knowing and those for whom this is still to come for me. These thoughts included the amazing ability that Friends have to discern,…
All Articles
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First Interfaith Week begins
Next week Friends across the country will be joining in the first ever Interfaith Week. Shanthini Cawson, a Harlow Friend on the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations, told the Friend: ‘this national Week is being facilitated by the Inter Faith Network UK and the Government Department for Communities… -
Welsh ‘troops out’ protest on Remembrance Sunday
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Quakers join London Citizens
On 25 November, representatives of West London Area Meeting (AM) will for the first time attend London Citizens Assembly with around 140 other faith and community groups who have combined forces to campaign on social issues. -
Quakers and criminal justice
Levels of crime are falling. Since 2002 they have dropped by more than twenty per cent across England and Wales alone. Even prison numbers are going down. Alternatives to prison are being more widely adopted. Offenders are being treated ever more humanely, and this is reducing the crime rates yet… -
The hurt behind appointments
I was pleased to read Roy Stephenson’s guidance to Friends on how to deal with a situation where a nominated name is not accepted by the appointing Meeting (6 November). My name was brought forward five years ago, with another Friend, for a position as a facilitator of the Hearts… -
The naked truth on climate change?
I was interested to read Chris Walker’s challenge to us all (6 November). His central challenge of taking faith-inspired action is one that needs to be heeded. My mind flitted back to some recent reading. Christopher Hill’s study of the English civil war gives considerable coverage to the emergence of… -
Letters - 13 November 2009
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Letters - Stephen Fry responses
On 30 October, the Friend reported comments by Stephen Fry in which he praised Quakers, saying ‘Honourable, kindly, patient, cheerful, welcoming, non-judgmental – no wonder [Quakers] were persecuted by Puritans in New England and sneered at and scoffed at by warmongers and “patriots” throughout history. The quiet dignity, forebearance and… -
Child of Light
Anyone who was in Bull Street Meeting House, Birmingham on Saturday 24 October – and around forty of us were – had another musical treat from The Leaveners. A choir of some twenty-four people, all ages and backgrounds, had gathered at 10am that morning and worked hard with John Sheldon,… -
Of truth, teacups and wineglasses
The first programme of his BBC television series on the history of Christianity (5 and 8 November) showed professor Diarmuid McCulloch pouring oil into a glass of water and a few minutes later adding red wine to water in another glass. He was presenting the difference between two fifth century… -
Eyewitness
Dissident voices All churches have their rebels, and Quaker hearts must go out to them. We have been hearing of Catholics for a Changing Church, which started out as a protest against pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical banning artificial contraception. Known earlier as the Catholic Renewal Movement, these faithful had…
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